


of a schnoz

by mayachain



Series: 14Valentines_2019 [7]
Category: De tre mostrene | The Three Aunts - Asbjørnsen & Moe, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Body Image, Community: 14valentines, Fairy Godparents, Fairy Tale Endings, Gen, Norwegian Mythology & Folklore, POV Female Character, old crones, we make our own fortune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 22:04:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17691938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayachain/pseuds/mayachain
Summary: Hedda’s nose had always been long.





	of a schnoz

** of a schnoz **

Hedda’s nose had always been long. So long, longer than anyone’s in the whole castle; almost everyone she knew had made fun of her for its length. No man had wanted to marry her for fear of it.

Had the spinning made it worse? Perhaps. Her nose had certainly grown right along while she’d sat there spinning her youth away, but youth had been long ago and the rest of her had grown too, back then. Hedda knew nothing else, but at least her home-spun thread was the best. At least her skill at the wheel kept her here in the castle for a living.

“If only you’ll claim me as your kinswoman,” she had told the silly pretty girl who’d had no idea which way Hedda’s life’s work’s apparatus even turned. Not so silly that she was unwilling to learn, mind, but naive enough to make her fellow wretches jealous for being noticed by the queen.

Hedda was too old to be jealous of the praise the girl received when she passed a crone’s work off as her own. Especially since it had been Hedda’s own idea implemented with her full permission. The girl had done it, and she’d kept her word, had claimed not one but three crones as kinswomen on her wedding day. Her wedding to the prince, no less.

Hedda’s nose had always been hideously long, but it was entirely possible that the spinning had made it worse. The prince believed it, and now he forbade the girl to so much as look at a spinning-wheel for the rest of her life. Hedda thought it was a pity that she would now never learn, but she would be a queen, she could learn other things. Better that the prince and his mother never discovered who had really done the work she had shown.

It had been Hedda and her rook for so many years. No children, no husband, no friends. But now a few hours of mad spinning had her sat at a table with the future king. She was too young to die yet, her future secured in form of the new crown princess. 

That evening, she shared merry looks with the crone with red, bleary eyes large as saucers and the crone whose back was humped and broad, and they all cackled with glee. Take that, loathsome crowd of distinctively shaped nose haters!

 

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